July was holiday season. August was festival season. I shared the stage with author David Roche at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts held for the most part outside in the beautiful site of Rockwood in Sechelt, BC. The organizers were welcoming and hospitable. The festival ran on time and, with the help of many volunteers, smoothly. The audience was warm and appreciative, and I enjoyed every minute. Talewind Books was on hand with hundreds of books, and the readers there supported the authors by buying them. What a privilege it was to be invited and what a great time I had.

 

This week the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society (my local writers’ group) is hosting an Arts and Words festival. Artists and writers have collaborated to produce a joint effort. I have to admit the artist I paired with, Suzy Naylor, did most of the work. She painted a scene from my book. I simply reproduced a short description from the book and added a little. I was lucky to have such a distinguished artist interested in spending the hours needed to make our collaboration a success. Suzy is giving a workshop on Creativity Thursday, April 22nd, 5 – 6 pm in the Costal room. I am giving a workshop on Thursday at noon on “How to Write a Novel” so come if you are interested. We are both around at the Gibsons Public Market n the waterfront at other times so stop us and chat.

 

 

Art by Suzy Naylor

While I haven’t been out on the water last week and won’t get out on the water this weekend, the last time I was out a humpback whale breeched near us. It was magnificent and a bit frightening.  As one of the paddlers said, “They don’t have echolocation, you know. They don’t know where we are.” Which meant they could accidently come up under us and throw us into the water. We paddled into shallow water between two small islands and watched from there while the whale surfaced several times.

 

Our first sighting of the whale was that tiny dark dot but it surfaced again much closer to us. Our camera expert Diane is also our steersperson and was too busy to take pictures. The whale was so active around us that we needed to give it all the ocean it wanted.

 

Photo Credit Diane Hill